Moving mined minerals is performable by several methods. For example, sometimes minerals are suspended in water and transported from one location to another, sometimes over distances greater than or equal to 50 m, by flowing the aqueous suspension. If, for whatever reason, the flow stops or is substantially reduced, the suspended minerals begin to settle. Settled minerals, especially for hard-packing settling slurries, are inefficiently transported by flowing water.
Furthermore, the increasing volume of water and relatively low solids content of the suspension makes it less desirable to operate a pipeline, especially when the flow is regularly stopped or substantially reduced.
Some mining processes recover solids, grind the recovered solids, and transport the ground, recovered solids to a station using extremely large conveyor belts. Such transporting generates dust, which, depending on the solids, may influence the quality of the environment or its inhabitants. Furthermore, sometimes solids are dewatered and thereafter hauled to deepwater ports where the dewatered solids are to be loaded on shipping containers. These shipping containers are usually hauled to yet another deepwater port, where the dewatered solids are once again offloaded and hauled off. Not only does each loading and offloading create more dust but the deepwater ports also substantially increase the cost of hauling because of the significant cost required for making, maintaining, and using a deepwater port.
It is to be understood that both the foregoing general description and the following detailed description are representative and explanatory only and are not restrictive of the invention, as claimed.
The accompanying drawings, which are incorporated in and constitute a part of this specification, illustrate embodiments of the invention and together with the description, serve to explain the principles of the invention.